Sweet Earth Veggie Burger

So I’ve done a food post on here before and think I may continue to do a few here and there because first, and most importantly, I love food. Second, I am on this super lazy version of a “health food transformation” of some sort and I figure if I can take small steps toward being healthy, maybe others out there would like to join me…? Being hopeful here.

I swear other people in my life who are on health transformations are able to make these huge life decisions overnight while I’m over here like “I stopped drinking/buying dairy milk, but also I like cheese because I haven’t found a good enough replacement yet.” Anyone else on the slow movement toward reshaping your diet like me?

All this to say, a few weeks ago I made veggie burgers for my little family to try something new and I’m still a little split on how I feel about them as a long-term staple in my diet moving forward. I hate being honest because I want to be positive toward the efforts of eliminating animal suffering from my diet (YES – I’m some bleeding heart empath who hates animals dying, but I still occasionally eat turkey bacon so don’t think it comes without hypocritical challenges, alright?!) but apparently I’m pickier than I allow myself to realize. Before I go too deep in my opinion blasting of the food, I’ll include the “recipe” here because I know I personally hate coming across blogs that blab on and on and on before including their recipes and yet… here I am… SO! Without further ado – (the “recipe” is on the back of the box included in my photos below. Please excuse my laziness of not retyping it)

Sweet Earth Veggie Burger

I chose to follow the oven instructions for the burgers because, more often than not, I’m all about minimal effort exertion for meals. In hindsight, I do think these burgers might have had a better texture if they were cooked in the skillet. Lesson learned, I suppose.

To go for the complete burger experience, I cut up some tomatoes, avocados, and lettuce, as well as slapped some mayo, cheese, and ketchup. I know that combination sounds like the worst attempt at making healthy changes in my diet but I’m trying okay!

My husband has been Red-Meat-Free for almost 6 months now so we have been experimenting with different meals. I mean, you can only have a chicken burger and chicken everything for so long, you know?

Overall, my husband and sister seemed to really enjoy it and I was a little on the fence. I can’t decide if their praise was simply gratitude at the fact that a meal was made for them after a long day or legitimately enjoying the meal itself. Here’s why: for me the patty itself was beautiful and the flavor was really great, I just had a hard time with the grains. Every bite was full of flavor and no grease, which when you’re first making the meat substitution transition is weird but trust me, I’ve begun to appreciate not biting into a disgustingly greasy burger as often anymore. I think the disconnect for me was in telling myself “okay this is a burger” and my mouth being like “yeah, message received but also whats up with the grains and stuff?”

That being said, if you are a health-food-consciousness level ahead of me then honestly this burger is probably bomb and I’m just back here dragging my feet about wanting healthy burgers to be more like meat. Which, I get it, it’s bad and murder and stuff. My thought process is that I don’t want to make the health-conscious journey all alone. I’m little miss “change the world” over here so I’m still on the hunt for ways I can trick my 50-year-old, meat-loving father into eating something delicious and ethical. So excuse me for wanting a little more variety in the “transition” foods category so more people can join the movement. Sheesh!